A deputy was on patrol in Jefferson County, Missouri, one February morning when he came across a distressing sight. The cop noticed something in a ditch off the road, and he decided to pull over to see what it was.
The cop became horrified as he realized he was seeing a small, elderly Dachshund who had been bound in tape and left in the freezing cold.
When the deputy approached the poor dog, it was clear that he was struggling just to survive, hanging on by only a thread.
It was approximated that the dog had been abandoned in the harsh Missouri winter roughly 12 hours before the deputy rescued him from the frozen, desolate country road.
Temperatures were in the low 30’s that morning, but just the night before they were only in the bone-chilling teens!
Poor Jimmy, as he’s been endearingly named for the moment, suffered alone through the entire night in the freezing cold until his rescuer came, and the deputy wasn’t letting him quit now.
The deputy picked the dog up and took him to the car where he gently tried to peel away all of the duct tape and electrical tape used to bind Jimmy before driving him to County Animal Control.
Animal control took one look at Jimmy and drove him to Ivan Animal Hospital in House Springs to get checked for any serious injuries or health concerns.
In an interview with Fox2 News, veterinarian Dr. Laura Ivan explains that with everything little Jimmy had been through, his outcome looked pretty good.
“His prognosis looks very good. He has a little bit of a residual head tilt which basically implies that he is off balance a little bit, which when they tilt their head they’re actually seeing straight ahead of us. But he’s been happy, he wags his tail a lot, he’s active, he’s eating.”
A video released by the Sheriff’s office seems to confirm that Jimmy was indeed a happy dog again.
While the deputy was happy to see that Jimmy would survive after all, he wasn’t about to put the case to rest.
The deputy was smart enough to hang onto every bit of the tape that he peeled away from the poor dog’s muzzle, head, and limbs to keep as evidence, explains Jefferson County Sheriff’s spokesman Grant Bissell.
“The deputy having that forethought to save that duct tape and took it back to the evidence lab and the techs worked on it for hours and they were able to slowly peel that duct tape apart and they found a fingerprint on the sticky side of it”
Thankfully, that fingerprint was all they needed to point their investigation in the right direction. It was completely worth all of the painstaking efforts it took to get it.
Running the fingerprint against their database led them to 39-year-old Paul Garcia, whom they promptly arrested on charges of animal abuse as well as armed criminal action for use of the tape to bind the dog.
While they were able to arrest Garcia, they still hadn’t been able to locate the dog’s rightful owner, until the Animal Hospital posted a picture of “Jimmy” in their care, requesting any inquiries about him be made through the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department.
That is when Katie Kofron came across the photo of who she believed was her dog, Flick, on the animal hospital’s Facebook page and claimed him in the comments.
“His name is flick he’s been my dog for 13 years.”
She goes on to say that he’s never run away farther than her next-door neighbor’s to play with their dogs, and she believes that Garcia must have stolen him from her yard when she let him out to go pee.
Of course, she received a lot of negative backlash in the comments as well as outright disbelief that “Flick” truly belonged to her, but Kofron jumped through all of the required hoops between the animal hospital and the sheriff’s department to get her beloved dog back in her arms.
After sending Ivan Animal Hospital copies of Flick’s X-rays from over a decade prior to his dog-knapping and comparing them to his current X-rays, all parties were able to positively confirm that “Jimmy” was, in fact, Flick and that he belonged with Katie.
And in another sweet twist, a good samaritan and funeral home chain owner named Todd Mahn heard about Flick’s story and was touched. He decided to step in and pay all of Flick’s medical care costs!
After their ordeal, Flick and Katie have finally been reunited. We’re so happy these two are back with each other, and from the video, it’s clear how much Flick missed Katie.
Check out the sweet reunion video below!
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